Eric Holder, (then as US Attorney), speaking at the Women's National Democratic Club in 1995: "What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable. It's not hip to carry a gun anymore. Uh, in the way in which we've changed our attitudes about cigarettes, we need to do this every day of the week and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way."

and a companion article:

Rasmussen Reports website has published a poll January 9th 2013, and it finds that 74% of American adults "Continue to believe the US Constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun."

Mission accomplished.

1 in 4 american adults do not believe the constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun. That is mindboggling for me.

Semi-autos are rarely used in crime. We all pretty much agree that semi-autos with large clips are really only good for nuts pretending to defend us from tyrants. So why don't you tell us why you really want to take them?

SlothB77:Eric Holder, (then as US Attorney), speaking at the Women's National Democratic Club in 1995: "What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable. It's not hip to carry a gun anymore. Uh, in the way in which we've changed our attitudes about cigarettes, we need to do this every day of the week and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way."

and a companion article:

Rasmussen Reports website has published a poll January 9th 2013, and it finds that 74% of American adults "Continue to believe the US Constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun."

Mission accomplished.

1 in 4 american adults do not believe the constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun. That is mindboggling for me.

Since the average citizen is not in a well-regulated militia as per the constitution, I can see why 1 in 4 doubt the claim you make. I mean, 1 in 4 people can't be on the Supreme Court and be under the thumb of a well-regulated well-lobbied industry forcing SCOTUS to ignore the fact that the average American is not in a well-regulated militia, can they?

Oh, and letting mentally ill people legally own all the human killing devices they can stuff in their basement is nuts. I have a feeling that most people that stock pile guns or even own more than a few are mentally ill. A collector, is one thing, hording is another. It's becoming obvious that a large number of the people buying these mass murder devices are simply the crazy lady with 80 cats.

SlothB77:Eric Holder, (then as US Attorney), speaking at the Women's National Democratic Club in 1995: "What we need to do is change the way in which people think about guns, especially young people, and make it something that's not cool, that it's not acceptable. It's not hip to carry a gun anymore. Uh, in the way in which we've changed our attitudes about cigarettes, we need to do this every day of the week and just really brainwash people into thinking about guns in a vastly different way."

and a companion article:

Rasmussen Reports website has published a poll January 9th 2013, and it finds that 74% of American adults "Continue to believe the US Constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun."

Mission accomplished.

1 in 4 american adults do not believe the constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun. That is mindboggling for me.

MFAWG:UberDave: BronyMedic: SlothB77: 1 in 4 american adults do not believe the constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun. That is mindboggling for me.

As I understand it, the area is also a legitimate debate zone for constitutional scholars - academic and in practice - due to the wording of the amendment as well.

You mean "Arms" doesn't just mean anything from a board with a nail in it to a 4mm howitzer? Who would have thunk it?

There's also the entire first half of the text to consider.

Remember kiddies: It's not judicial activism when we do it.

That's the difference between reading it in plain English, and reading it as a legal statement. In plain English it implies the militia bit is the whole reason. Legally, however, the militia bit is not a qualifier, and the part about the right of the people to keep and bear arms stands on it's own. Most of this stuff makes sense if you bother to start reading what the SCOTUS justices actually say in their rulings. They explain it pretty well.

If it was SEMA I could think of some choice topics and areas for Bill to explore but the CES.... the need for every kid needing a moble computing device and how it can aid in learning... and playing angry birds.

Oh, and letting mentally ill people legally own all the human killing devices they can stuff in their basement is nuts. I have a feeling that most people that stock pile guns or even own more than a few are mentally ill. A collector, is one thing, hording is another. It's becoming obvious that a large number of the people buying these mass murder devices are simply the crazy lady with 80 cats.

Oh, and letting mentally ill people legally own all the human killing devices they can stuff in their basement is nuts. I have a feeling that most people that stock pile guns or even own more than a few are mentally ill. A collector, is one thing, hording is another. It's becoming obvious that a large number of the people buying these mass murder devices are simply the crazy lady with 80 cats.

So a collector cannot have more than a few?

Are you questioning the health diagnosis, almost certainly justified by extensive medical qualifications, of Granny_Panties?

Mr_Fabulous:I should be able to buy an ICBM equipped with nuclear warheads at my Wal-Mart if I choose to do so. After all, I need to protect myself from the government.

That's how I read the 2nd amendment, anyway. YMMV.

Strawman aside, I really would like a 2nd amendment absolutist explain why civilian ownership of RPGs and surface-to-air missiles is permissible or verboten. A bunch of (most?) gun enthusiasts are perfectly fine with the near ban on fully-auto firearms but froth at the mouth when semi-autos are eyed for greater regulation. Where's the threshold?

Oh, and letting mentally ill people legally own all the human killing devices they can stuff in their basement is nuts. I have a feeling that most people that stock pile guns or even own more than a few are mentally ill. A collector, is one thing, hording is another. It's becoming obvious that a large number of the people buying these mass murder devices are simply the crazy lady with 80 cats.

BronyMedic:SlothB77: 1 in 4 american adults do not believe the constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun. That is mindboggling for me.

As I understand it, the area is also a legitimate debate zone for constitutional scholars - academic and in practice - due to the wording of the amendment as well.

It's only debatable if you're unable to understand a statement like..

A well regulated refrigerator, being necessary to feed your family, the right of the people to keep and bear food shall not be infringed.

Some people will take that statement as giving the government control over what you put in your refrigerator, others will look at the common usage of the word regulated during the time in which this was written, and realize that regulated didn't mean "controlled" as it does today, but instead it would mean a well supplied refrigerator able to feed your family at any time, and that the actual right had little to do with the refrigerator itself, but the food, and everyone's right to have it.

The historical meaning of "well regulated"Besides, the notion of a collective right is ludicrous in and of itself. Since when would anyone be afraid that the government would restrict itself to the point of impotence? That's exactly the opposite reason of why the revolution started.

Rootus:MFAWG: UberDave: BronyMedic: SlothB77: 1 in 4 american adults do not believe the constitution guarantees the right of an average citizen to own a gun. That is mindboggling for me.

As I understand it, the area is also a legitimate debate zone for constitutional scholars - academic and in practice - due to the wording of the amendment as well.

You mean "Arms" doesn't just mean anything from a board with a nail in it to a 4mm howitzer? Who would have thunk it?

There's also the entire first half of the text to consider.

Remember kiddies: It's not judicial activism when we do it.

That's the difference between reading it in plain English, and reading it as a legal statement. In plain English it implies the militia bit is the whole reason. Legally, however, the militia bit is not a qualifier, and the part about the right of the people to keep and bear arms stands on it's own. Most of this stuff makes sense if you bother to start reading what the SCOTUS justices actually say in their rulings. They explain it pretty well.

Why did the drafters add a prefacatory phrase to only the Second Amendment? It is generally agreed that there isn't any "excess verbiage" in the Constitution.

They are *REALLY* pushing this hard. I think it's going to backfire on them, but my biggest fear is that it's going to backfire in a particularly nasty way. The following was written in 1976, and it's still true today:

On the other side is a group of people who do not tend to be especially articulate or literate, and whose world view is rarely expressed in print. Their model is that of the independent frontiersman who takes care of himself and his family with no interference from the state. They are "conservative" in the sense that they cling to America's unique pre-modern tradition-a non-feudal society with a sort of medieval liberty writ large for everyman. To these people, "sociological'" is an epithet. Life is tough and competitive. Manhood means responsibility and caring for your own.

This hard-core group is probably very small, not more than a few million people, but it is a dangerous group to cross. From the point of view of a right-wing threat to internal security, these are perhaps the people who should be disarmed first, but in practice they will be the last. As they say, to a man, "I'll bury my guns in the wall first." They ask, because they do not understand the other side, "Why do these people want to disarm us?" They consider themselves no threat to anyone; they are not criminals, not revolutionaries. But slowly, as they become politicized, they find an analysis that fits the phenomenon they experience: Someone fears their having guns, someone is afraid of their defending their families, property, and liberty. Nasty things may happen if these people begin to feel that they are cornered.Great American Gun War

The Timothy McVeigh of tomorrow is being created right now, not by the NRA, but by some of the same people who created him back then, like Bill Clinton. Remember that pretty much his sole motivation was due to the advance of gun control back in the early 1990's, and to two separate incidents (Ruby Ridge and Waco) that had attempts at enforcing gun control at their very heart, and resistance against that enforcement.

That's not an endorsement of McVeigh's actions, btw, anymore than I would be endorsing the actions of the 9/11 hijackers by saying that the seeds of that action were planted by the US actively ignoring Afghanistan after the Soviet pullout in 1989. McVeigh got what he deserved: Execution.

Pushing for more gun control this hard and this fast on all fronts is going to cause the fringe elements, who had been pretty much quiescent and satisfied, and feeling vindicated after the Heller and McDonald decisions in the Supreme Court, to go into overdrive. Even the ones that aren't necessarily hardcore and wouldn't dream of committing a violent act unprovoked will "bury their guns in the wall" if a ban or some sort of registration comes in, and the will wait for the results of the inevitable legal challenges to wend through the court system.

The problem is that if there is some sort of spark, like a person who is generally law-abiding but who gets raided and possibly harmed or killed by the ATF because they think he has something prohibited or unregistered, then that might motivate an unhinged person who would have otherwise not been motivated to take action to strike back, and that's a *VERY* bad thing.

I think that Barack Obama is making a bad miscalculation here, and it's going to bite him (and us) in the ass. He is riding what he sees as a large wave of popular support for doing SOMETHING, and it sounds like he and others are throwing everything they possibly can against the wall to see if it will stick. The problem is that it's going to radicalize even some of the Fudds* because some of the proposals on the table will actually effect them.

The popular support to do something may be wide, but it's shallow, and will fade. That's why there is the insistence on the part of the administration to "strike while the iron is hot", and right after the election. Note that Barack Obama is safe now: Had he tried this right before the election, using the Aurora theater shooting, it's entirely possible that he would have lost rural Democrats, and that we'd be swearing in Mitt Romney in a little over a week. I've pointed out in numerous Fark threads over the past 2 years or so that the Obama administration wouldn't push for gun control until after the election. Sadly, I was proven to be right.

The support for gun rights, on the other hand, may not be quite as wide (though recent polls suggest the country is pretty evenly split), but it's *DEEP*. People who care about gun rights care about them even when guns aren't in the public eye, and they have long memories.

Having rung the warning tocsin, I'm going to finish with the last part from that paper I quoted earlier, because I think it's advice that Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, Andrew Cuomo, and all the rest would do well to remember:

It would be useful, therefore, if some of the mindless passion, on both sides, could be drained out of the gun-control issue. Gun control is no solution to the crime problem, to the assassination problem, to the terrorist problem. Reasonable licensing laws, reasonably applied, might be marginally useful in preventing some individuals, on some occasions, from doing violent harm to others and to themselves. But so long as the issue is kept at white heat, with everyone having some ground to suspect everyone else's ultimate intentions, the rule of reasonableness has little chance to assert itself.

I'm fine with reasonable laws within the constraints of respecting the enumerated constitutional rights of all Americans. I think that, for the most part, we already have pretty reasonable gun laws. Guns are more restricted than any other common item you can buy, and I have a hard time imagining any law that would be of significance in preventing a tragedy like Sandy Hook that would still be constitutional. After all, Connecticut already *HAD* many of the proposals on the table: Assault weapons ban, waiting periods, licensing and registration. We know that any assault weapons ban and magazine restrictions are going to fail: We tried it at the national level for 10 years, and according to the government itself, it didn't work: "Should it be renewed, the ban's effects on gun violence are likely to be small at best and perhaps too small for reliable measurement". Re-writing it so it would work would will bring the Fudds into it, because then many purely sporting or self-defense guns would be affected.

*Fudds are generally older hunters and other sportsman who are OK with a number of gun restrictions, so long as they don't directly effect their hobby. Named after Elmer Fudd of Looney Tunes fame, the term is mildly pejorative. A more politic way to express it is to call them "Gun Culture 1.0" with the people who believe in a substantive Second Amendment right that encompasses more modern weaponry as "Gun Culture 2.0". There is a generation gap, with the younger gun owners more aligned with owning semi-automatics and the like, but there is a significant number of older gun owners who also would be in GC 2.0. Few young shooters would be GC 1.0.

TofuTheAlmighty:Mr_Fabulous: I should be able to buy an ICBM equipped with nuclear warheads at my Wal-Mart if I choose to do so. After all, I need to protect myself from the government.

That's how I read the 2nd amendment, anyway. YMMV.

Strawman aside, I really would like a 2nd amendment absolutist explain why civilian ownership of RPGs and surface-to-air missiles is permissible or verboten. A bunch of (most?) gun enthusiasts are perfectly fine with the near ban on fully-auto firearms but froth at the mouth when semi-autos are eyed for greater regulation. Where's the threshold?

Between full auto and semi-auto. Yes, it is kind of arbitrary. My personal line is that citizens and police have the same rights. I don't have a rifle but as long as the police have semi-auto rifles, I'm not giving up my right to own one.

/Darn. I was hoping for jobs, health care reform, environmental protections and improved foreign relations./I guess we'll have to settle for criminal and naive infringements on our constitutional rights./No one saw that coming.

spif:crazydave023: There was an article on Tea Party Nation this morning about how Obama is gonna take our guns and there will be a second civil war. I proceeded to troll and they went nuts.

Also, we might have some moderate steps for gun control but nothing major. There are way too many guns in circulation.

How could this possibly be accomplished without the shiat hitting the fan?

Put a $1000 bounty on any gun. People will be falling over themselves to turn in the shiatty little .22s and .25s that are most used in every day murders. Nobody's going to turn in an AR15 for that, but AR15s aren't much of a problem. Unless you've had a left-brain-ectomy that is.